Also each week, seattlepi.com presents “Seattle Rewind,” a local history podcast hosted by Feliks Banel. This week, we share the story of former Seattle Police Chief William Meredith and former Lieutenant Roy Olmstead, two legendary corrupt cops from Seattle’s early days.

An 1901 illustration of the Second Avenue South drug store (P-I file)

In 1901, Meredith accused Seattle entertainment mogul John Considine of having an illegal abortion performed for an alleged mistress.

Considine’s attorney rebutted the story, and the angry saloon owner said that under Meredith’s watch, officers were asking for bribes. City leaders asked that Meredith turn in his badge.

Furious, Meredith didn’t come empty-handed. He went looking for Considine with sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun, a revolver and a knife. He found Considine in a corner building on Second Avenue South, then Guy’s Drugstore, and drew his shotgun from under a brown-paper wrapping.

Meredith fired twice, but managed to inflict only a minor head wound.

Considine’s brother fractured the chief’s skull during the ensuing fight, and after breaking away from a policeman’s hold, John Considine grabbed the chief’s revolver and shot him three times.

Seattle’s recently resigned police chief was dead. Considine was later cleared of the shooting.

In 1919, Olmstead became the department’s youngest lieutenant. He learned how bootleggers ran their operations, enforcing “dry laws” when Washington was one of 23 states to ban alcohol before the nationwide prohibition.

That’s why some top cops were shocked when Olmstead, a rising star in the department, was busted with his gang after unloading Canadian whiskey near Edmonds. He became well known in speakeasies for supplying booze to the city’s thirsty elites.

Olmstead built Seattle’s first commercial radio station in his Mount Baker home, and his wife broadcast the first kids show in the Northwest. But the show wasn’t done for the kids. Elsie Olmstead peppered her fairytales with code words for her husband’s crew, telling them exactly where and when they were to meet with Canadian booze freighters.

But the feds eventually put wiretaps in Olmstead’s home phone and phones of his conspirators and on Thanksgiving 1924, Olmstead and his crew were busted in Des Moines They had hundreds of cases of booze with them.

Olmstead

The Police Department fired him.

The former Seattle cop fought the wiretaps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court but lost. In 1926, Olmstead and 20 others were convicted of conspiracy and violating the National Prohibition Act.

In prison, Olmstead began studying Christian Science and spent time rehabilitating prisoners at the King County Jail after his release. His work earned him a pardon from President Roosevelt.

Elsie Olmstead, his “lovely wife,” as the newspapers liked to describe her, faithfully greeted him when he was released from McNeill Island Prison. But she divorced him years later, citing desertion.

Olmstead, whose operation once grossed an estimated $200,000 a month in the 1920s, died in 1966 with an estate of a mere $28,000. At his request, he had no funeral.

Here are a few clips I found in the P-I archives when researching the article. Click on the dates to download the PDFs.

Feb. 21, 1926: Olmstead and 20 others were convicted of conspiracy and violating the National Prohibition Act.

May. 13, 1931: Olmstead was released. He “was looking the picture of health, and he bade the prison guards goodbye in much the same fashion that he might have paid his respects to the attendants at a fashionable resort,” a P-I reporter wrote.

May 6, 1966: the P-I runs a short obituary on Olmstead (who had an “a” added to his last name after being released.) In prison, Olmstead began studying Christian Science and for years after his release spent time rehabilitating prisoners at the King County Jail. It noted that his work earned him a pardon from President Roosevelt in 1935.